Going online. Does ICT enabled-participation engage the young in local governance?

Local governments increasingly use online strategies to strengthen political participation of citizens in policy and politics. Young people, however, are generally under-represented. This article studies age patterns of participation across offline and online forms of action to test whether online initiatives are able to overcome this age bias. We first report a case study of online and offline problem reporting to local authorities. We find that simply going from offline to online participation reinforces rather than mitigates age bias. We then report a case study of message posting on an online political forum. In this case, age bias disappears. In contrast to the traditional instrumental modes, a forum is an expressive form of online participation. The young seem to value the act of participating over the outcomes of participation. For practice, these findings suggest a need for participation policies that speak to these expressive needs of young. In recent years, social media have reinforced the potential for expressive participation.     

投资者权益保护与群体诉讼模式选择

证券民事诉讼制度存在系统性偏袒,集团诉讼、团体诉讼、选定当事人模式等各不相同.在解决系统性偏袒、保护投资者权益方面,集团诉讼与团体诉讼具有相对优势,我国证券民事诉讼制度改革应整合其优势以矫正系统性偏袒,切实保护投资者权益.     

法律解释的去理论化与立场转换——认知心理学的启示

学界提出的各种法律解释理论不仅仅在规范层面上无法自圆其说,同时也无法对法院的解释实践作出准确的描述。尽管针对美国联邦最高法院的经验研究表明法院的法律解释实践趋向于新文本主义和法律实用主义,但这些经验研究却没有证明法官遵循了这些解释理论。在对法律解释去理论化之后,如何看待实践中存在的"微观不一致与宏观一致"需要一种立场转换,即关注作为解释主体的法官的认知过程。     

Attention! The meanings of attention to politics in surveys

This research note explores the role of reported attention to politics in survey overclaiming about politics. Using recognition of real and fictitious political parties in the context of the UK's 2019 European Parliament elections, we find that people who report higher attention to politics are more likely to over-report recognition of fictitious parties, and are also more likely to recognize new real political parties - those that emerged around the issue of ‘Brexit’ in the months before the election. To resolve these patterns, we show that political attention makes little difference to the accuracy of responses for people who have high political knowledge, or if it does so, it increases accuracy. However, for those with lower political knowledge, high reported political attention is a source of potential survey error and bias. These findings are consistent with higher survey satisficing and norm compliance among those who report having greater attention to politics, particularly among those who have lower knowledge. The implications are important for understanding the meaning and consequences of ‘attention to politics’ in surveys.     

Early Innovation Adoption: Effects of Performance-Based Motivation and Organizational Characteristics

Abstract

Early adopters of innovation play a critical role in the successful spread of the innovation by legitimizing the adoption of the innovation and/or providing evidence of its effectiveness. This article explores why some organizations adopt innovations before than others by focusing on determinants of early innovation adoption. Analysis reveals that there is a U-shaped influence of organizational performance on early innovation adoption. Most organizations are encouraged to be early adopters by their poor performance, but some organizations with very high performance tend to be innovation-friendly. Other organizational characteristics such as organizational size and pro-innovation bias also have positive impacts on early innovation adoption. These findings have practical implications about strategies for successfully diffusing innovations.     

Candidate and party affective polarization in U.S. presidential elections: The person-negativity bias?

We investigate the degree of affective polarization in presidential election years toward the two major parties and their nominees. Notwithstanding studies which show that individuating information about an out-group member can generate a person-positivity bias, we demonstrate a person-negativity bias directed at out-party candidates at least for some. We motivate and test two hypotheses: first, we expect more sophisticated partisans to display a greater difference in their feelings towards specific candidates compared to evaluations of the parties themselves; second, we anticipate sophisticated partisans will exhibit a person-negativity bias toward out-party candidates and a person-positivity bias toward in-party candidates. The results accentuate the conditional nature of the person-positivity bias and shed light on how political sophistication is linked to affective polarization.     

“台湾人”群体对中国大陆的刻板印象

当代台湾已经形成"台湾人群体",而视大陆人为"他群",他们对大陆的刻板印象多是负面的,从而形成偏见与歧视,对两岸关系造成严重的伤害。这是在两岸关系和平发展进程中,必须关注的一个问题。本文探讨"台湾人群体"对大陆的刻板印象的具体表现及其危害,并且针对现阶段两岸交流的情况,分析其对减少刻板印象的作用与局限,认为通过两岸群际沟通减少刻板印象,进而减少偏见与歧视需要经过相当长的过程,至于增强两岸认同,形成"两岸共同体"更需要走很长的路。     

The Theoretical Characteristics of Marx＇s Emotional View of Nature

马克思以前旧自然观具有非实践性的特征。在马克思看来,关于人与自然的关系问题,离开实践去理解是不能真正解决的。马克思感性自然观是实践的、社会历史的自然观。在马克思看来,自然与历史是辩证统一的,历史是“自然的历史”,历史先行地包含着自然的前提和内容;自然是“历史的自然”,而自然也必须是历史中介了的自然。历史与自然的相互渗透和相互中介构成了人类的现实世界。马克思的感性自然观对自然界诉诸人的感性实践活动的理解时,它内在的同时也是在诉诸一种社会历史性的理解。换言之,实践历史性是马克思感性自然观的理论特质。     

The Messenger Overwhelming the Message: Ideological Cues and Perceptions of Bias in Television News

Survey research has demonstrated that citizens perceive ideological bias in television news, specifically with regard to CNN and Fox News Channel (FNC), which allegedly represent the liberal and conservative viewpoint, respectively. In this paper I argue that attaching the CNN and FNC labels to news stories sends an ideological cue to the viewer regarding the content of the story. Utilizing an experimental design that allows manipulation of the network attribution of actual FNC and CNN content, I am able to demonstrate that the CNN and FNC labels function as ideological signals to the viewer, with this signal being most pronounced among ideologues whose views are supposedly at odds with those attributed to the network.

The return of censitary suffrage? The effects of automatic voter registration and voluntary voting in Chile

How does a change from a compulsory voting system to a voluntary one affect election turnout? It is often argued that an electoral regime under which voting is voluntary reproduces class bias or, in other words, that the rich vote more than the poor. This bias is corrected either by the introduction of compulsory voting or the existence of strong left-wing parties and trade unions able to mobilize poorer segments of the population. In this article, we put forward an alternative argument. We assert that when voting is voluntary, class bias can disappear if an election is very competitive since this affects both turnout and its socio-economic composition. To evaluate this argument, we examine the case of Chile's 2012 municipal election when voting was voluntary for the first time, instead of compulsory.